Desperate Times Call for Desperate Drinking, Local Hipster

There's not much to see yet, but the new website LocalHipster.com vows to help Orange Countians find the best bar deals so that little things like rising unemployment, a shitty economy and more of the same for the forseeable future do not stop anyone from drowning their sorrows.

"LocalHipster.com makes it possible to continue your bar habits while helping to save you a buck or two," says one of its local promoters, Nate Ristau, who is quick to point out the man behind the Orange County operation is Corona del Mar resident Morgan Slauson, who compiles and writes all the content. And the man behind Slauson is Matt Dowgwillo, who started ThirftyHipster.com in Minneapolis in 2003. Like the Minnesota mothership, LocalHipster.com aims to make it possible to save on your bar tabs because sometime, somewhere in Orange County, it's always happy hour.

"All you have to do is be flexible," explains Dowgwillo. "If you were planning on going at 8:30 p.m., (you might) go at 9 p.m. instead, or (if) you usually go out for date night on Wednesdays, go out on Tuesday instead."

But the site's creator vows to move beyond happy-hour deals and assorted barfly somesuch to become "a portal for all things cool in Orange County, posting everything from art openings to surf competitions, from intimate wine tastings to large concerts." They'll also sponsor events like concerts and fashion shows.

Uh, wait a tick: Doesn't ocweekly.com already do that kind of . . . erm . . . Barkeep, make it a double this time!

Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before "graduating" to OC Weekly in 1995 as the paper's first calendar editor. He has contributed as a freelance editor and writer to several publications and been the subject of or featured in several reports online, in print and on the radio and television. One of countless times he returned to his Costa Mesa, CA, home with a bounty of awards from a journalism competition, his wife told him to take out the trash.